A Gourmet 33rd Birthday

I arrived home on a Saturday evening ON Josh's birthday! I felt badly that I wasn't home to be able to prepare a cake and celebrate it "properly" with a date or even a "party" with the kids' help. Fortunately, Josh is very resourceful, and he also knows what he wants. He ordered himself a birthday present,

and went to Costco and the store to pick up the ingredients he wanted for his birthday dinner, and had the menu all planned out for us to prepare. Awesome!

One of our favorite restaurants serves a Peppercorn Steak that is delicious. We once tried to replicate it, but it wasn't quite the same. Josh found a recipe for this Brandy Flamed Peppercorn Steak that looked equally wonderful, but with a creamy, savory sauce. We didn't purchase any Brandy for the FLAMING part, but we did get some red wine to make the sauce! We whipped it up after church, and it was DELICIOUS! I could have poured the sauce on anything and it would have tasted fantastic! Paired with some garlic mashed red potatoes, steamed asparagus and parmesan parsley rolls, it was a scrumptious dinner!

Thanks to the kids for setting the table. Note how they used the "special" knife and spoon, which is a random mis-matched pair, inherited from the church or something. I should probably attempt to find its owner.

Happy Birthday, Josh! Here's to things getting even finer with age! :)